


We all live in a house on fire

by becauseitwasreal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Not Happy, post-DH oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:06:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8810863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becauseitwasreal/pseuds/becauseitwasreal
Summary: Draco wondered if this house had ever been his home.





	

“It’s not your house.”  
His arms were crossed in front of him, and his harsh voice may once have scared her. Now it left her indifferent. She could be stubborn too, if that’s what he really wanted. “I believe something different was said when you proposed to me. ‘This house will be your house, your home, too,’ I seem to remember. I know you’ve lied to a great many people, Lucius, but I didn’t think you’d ever lie to me.  
“Exactly…” He reminded her briefly of a small, angry Doxy. His eyes were too tired. “Our home, Narcissa. I can’t believe you’re thinking about selling our home. In open auction.”  
“To the highest bidder. It would attract a lot of people. We could even sell some of the furniture separately, if you want to.”  
“You want to sell the furniture?”  
“Perhaps some of the paintings too.”  
Lucius didn’t say anything. He turned around and leaned over the windowsill, his back hunched. Narcissa wondered when she had started to think of him as an old man. He had aged more in a year than he had in the past ten years.  
“This place isn’t my home anymore, Lucius. He took that from us. And –”  
“But – ”  
“Let me finish.” Her voice was sharper than intended, and she laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder as she spoke. “I hate this place. Draco hates this place. Sooner or later he will find a suitable life, and he will leave. And what will be left for us here? A house full of ghosts.”  
Lucius turned to her, his lips a thin line. “It can be our home again. We can make it our home.”  
His wife threw him a pitiful glance. No matter what he said, she knew he couldn’t go down the cellar either. “We could start over again. Somewhere far away from here. We could go to France.” She had always liked France. Its elegance, and the sun.  
He shook his head, a strangled laugh escaping from his throat. “I don’t want to start over.”  
Don’t you? she thought. Don’t you regret it? Not a single thing? Narcissa knew better than to ask these questions aloud, of course. She didn’t want to fight with her husband. She really didn’t. He just made it so easy.  
“We’ve just gotten it back. I’m not giving it away again. End of discussion.” He strolled out of the room. He didn’t slam the door behind him, but he might as well have.  
Narcissa sighed. This was going to be a long life.

The thick, wooden door couldn’t keep out his father’s voice. This wasn’t the first fight they had had in the past few weeks, but Draco found himself surprised by the subject. Auctioning the house… He wondered if his mother had lost his sanity.  
He bit his lip and sat down against the white wall. She was right, of course. They all hated it. Even his father hated it, he could tell. It was the little things. Lights left on during the night at the darkest spots of the house, rooms that weren’t used anymore. But of course, the Mighty Lucius Malfoy wouldn’t let himself be bullied from his own house by such trivialities. Don’t mind the literal skeletons in the closet. He knew he’d sell the house the minute he inherited it. Just out of spite.  
The door was opened and his father stormed past him, not even noticing his presence. Not that it made any difference. He wouldn’t listen to mother, and there was even less of chance his father would listen to him. If only he had a little less pride. Maybe then he would have made a good father.  
Draco wondered if this house had ever been his home. His lip was bleeding.

The bench creaked under his weight. He couldn’t remember it doing that before, but then again, he hadn’t been here in a while. The weeds had grown a little. There was no one doing the gardening now the house elves were all gone.  
Dead, his wife’s voice reminded him in his head. Everyone is dead.  
Not everyone, not us. That seemed to matter less and less these days. Sometimes he wondered if they wouldn’t have been better off if he were dead. If he had been dead for a long time.  
Despite being a little overgrown, this particular spot of the garden had not changed much since the day he had first set foot in the garden. He remembered coming here with his mother, feeding the fish in the pond. They were nowhere to be seen today, and he wondered if they had died too. If they had simply ceased to be and were blown out of existence. Such things happened, he guessed.  
He wondered if his wife was right. Malfoy Manor didn’t feel like his home anymore, not right now, but surely, that wouldn’t have to stay that way? The ghost couldn’t stay forever, and even the cellars would have to be cleaned out sometime. He could do that. He must. This was the house he had grown up in, the house where Draco had set his first steps, the garden where he had flown and fallen off his first broomstick. They couldn’t just sell their lives.  
Lucius picked up a small rock, fearing the bench would really give under his weight. His father had proposed to his mother here, and he picked the same spot to propose to Narcissa. He doubted if any work had been done on the bench since that time. Probably not.  
He tossed the rock into the pond, and watched the water ripple. His father had done the same once, and told him that that was what life looked like. Lucius couldn’t help but feel like it had been an understatement.  
Narcissa had looked beautiful the day he proposed to her. Of course he remembered the bloody words. What was his would be hers, and the only thing he asked in return, was her heart. She was always right – one of her most infuriating character traits, if only because he didn’t like being wrong. He remembered her smile as he stared at the water, waiting for a younger version of his wife to rise from the deep and tell him that everything was going to be all right. To tell him that she still loved him. She was still beautiful, while he looked upon his own reflection in disgust.  
He couldn’t sell this place, not even if he wanted to. There were good memories too. They would overshadow the bad ones, eventually. This was their home. It still would be.  
A frog plunging itself into the water blurred his reflection, and he rose from the bench.  
If only he could believe himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Tennessee Williams’s "The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore"  
> I don't own the characters, I just borrow them.


End file.
